Drift wood

[kx125]

hi,

when buying drift wood for a pet store should it be soaked or boiled?
also can driftwood change the ph or something?

thanks

[Willyleigh]

The tannins in the wood can lower the pH of the water.

[jeffs99dime]

yes. the driftwood should be soaked in boiling water. after that i usually soak the driftwood for about 1-2 weeks. no materr what you do though, you're still going to leach tannins into the tank for a short time. in a south american biotope, this is ideal.

[cocoa_pleco]

It kinda gives the tank a cool brown tinge. I tried just quickly washing driftwood once and placing it in the tank and it looked cool

[RobbieG]

Make sure you triple check the driftwood for livestock before you boil it if your LFS keeps it in tanks - I have gotten 2 Fiddler crabs, about a million bamboo shrimp, and a couple of Raphael Cats along with my driftwood.

[Lady Hobbs]

Make sure you buy driftwood for fish tanks and not reptile tanks. Most of that sold for fish tanks sold is bogwood which always sinks. The stuff for reptile tanks is driftwood and rarely sinks. You can soak driftwood forever and some of it will never sink. It can be siliconed to slate, however, and held down with rocks but eventually that silcone may break loose and up pops the wood again.

I was unable to boil my wood due to the size. I filled the tub with the hottest water from the faucet, tossed in a bunch of table salt (to kill any bugs) and scrubbed it with a brush. I drained and refilled the tub for nearly two weeks this way but only used the salt bath for the first few times. I did this with the wood I got from the wild. The wood I purchased for this purpose has already been processed (cleaned and boiled) so I just soaked it for about 3 days......as long as it sinks.

Malaysian wood is bogwood, heavy and sinks right away.

You can use a large trash can, a kids wading pool, anything that holds water.

pH will lower some but hardly enough to get too excited about and won't bring it down for long. Once the tannins wash away in a few weeks, the pH will stay about the same.

Driftwood is from tree branches and bogwood is from roots to clarify.

[kx125]

ok thanks for your help